The phonological adaptation of loanwords in Italian

Abstract

The focus of this article is the phonological adaptation of loanwords in Italian, accounted for in terms of the phonological processes employed. It looks at the underlying forms in the source language and analyzes the changes that have led to the output words in our target language. It also looks at the type of lexical fields in which the borrowings are predominant, which reflect the socio-economic contacts between the languages at issue. An overview of the phonological processes which are encountered is offered in an attempt to provide a theoretical framework of their behaviour, by using the generative phonology rules.

Keywords

• loanwords
• italian
• phonological processes
• phonological rules